As Internet usage continues to grow, more and more customers are accessing communications services via a mobile device, e.g., a cell phone, a smart phone, etc. For example, a customer may receive multimedia content via his/her cell phone. The cell phone transmits and receives voice and data packets to and from the service provider's network via a base station and an access network.
The customer's ability to access services via a mobile device is dependent on the availability of capacity on various network elements, e.g., base station subsystems, radio access networks, cell site equipment, core network nodes responsible for communicating with user endpoint devices via the base station subsystems or radio access networks, and so on. The service provider then needs to perform capacity planning and manage the performance of the network. However, capacity planning requires consideration of many factors such as load balancing, capital cost, etc. One approach for planning capacity is manually manipulating parameters associated with each relevant factor until an experienced planner deems the result satisfactory. Unfortunately, this manual approach is labor intensive and highly non-optimal for capacity planning of large networks.